new, proud owner of two 12 inch xxx, now I need a box

The temporary install consists of a dual sealed box with .8 ft^3 per sub and powered by an orion 2500d at 1 ohm total. It sounds ok at low to moderate levels but peaks really nasty at high power. So I'm thinking ported. I have a few questions for you guys:
1) what is the ideal setup for a xxx, sealed vs. ported?
2) I'm an sq freaq but wouldn't mind spl potential, can ported be as good sound quality wise as sealed (no power/space restrictions-i'm thining of upgrading amp to soundstream xxx, need more power and lower noise level)
3)If I go ported, what would be the general shape of the box needed and how much can I deviate from it. I understand I need to have a certain amount of surface area for the port and a certain length, what else matters?

Re: new, proud owner of two 12 inch xxx, now I need a box

I am running a prefab. box that I used on my infinitys, it's a qlogic 1 ft^3 per sub but I substracted the sub size displacement .2; its pretty accurate right? I thought it would sound good because re reccomends .8 for sealed. One sub brocke the bottom half of the box and was just bumping there slanted, half out of the box. I'm deff. using better srews and thicker wood for my custom box.
The subs are dual 4 ohms, so I run everything parallel; the amp sees a 1 ohm load total. I'm really not too happy with the amp. I have to go past 3/4 gains to get enough bass to keep up with my speakers, and that's on alpine's 4 volt outputs. I usually run it at full gain if I want to feel it good. I deff need more power or a more efficient box type. I'm sure the amp is fine, these subs just **** to much power. I ran it on a 500w polk momo amp for the first week, one sub only and the membrane would barrely move

Re: new, proud owner of two 12 inch xxx, now I need a box

Originally Posted by bjfish11

yea, those are some nice expensive subs to not properly set ure gains. Get a dmm or oscope and set them right.

I run the amp without bass boost, Alpine's MX funciton is off, and the eq line is flat. I low passed it at 80 hz and it's in a tiny sealed box, I don't think the orion can distroy these. Clipping would, but I noticed the orion cuts off if that happens Besides I don't get full 4 volts unless the headunit is at max with bass level at max, correct?

As for the box, is 5 ft^3 without taking into account any substractions such as sub displacement pots etc enough? Re reccomends 4 ft^3, is that net volume? Should I go with their box reccomandation?